Facebook faces EU and US probes over data harvesting

The Trans Atlantic Consumer Dialogue (TACD), an organisation of leading American and European consumer rights groups, wrote to the Irish Data Protection Commissioner Billy Hawkes and to the US Federal Trade Commission on the 29 July 2014.

EurActiv reported on the 1 August 2014 that Facebook faced separate investigations by EU and US data regulators over its plans to collect web browsing histories for targeted advertising after a complaint by consumers on both sides of the Atlantic.

Separately on the same day, an Austrian law student called for Facebook users to join a class-action lawsuit against the company’s alleged violations of its users' privacy.

• Primary Source

TACD: Letter from TACD to the US Federal Trade Commission and the Irish Data Protection Commissioner, July 2014 http://tacd.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/TACDletter-to-FTC-and-Irish-Data-Protection-Commissioner-re-Facebook-data-collection.pdf

Ireland: Data Protection Commission: Facebook Ireland Ltd, 21.12.2011: Report of Audit http://dataprotection.ie/documents/facebook%20report/final%20report/report.pdf

TACD: Tag: Information Society http://tacd.org/topics/policy/information-society-policy/

Ireland: Data Protection Commissioner https://www.dataprotection.ie/viewdoc.asp?DocID=4

Facebook: News, 12.06.14: Making Ads Better and Giving People More Control Over the Ads They See http://newsroom.fb.com/news/2014/06/making-ads-better-and-giving-people-more-control-over-the-ads-they-see/

---